The maximum braking deceleration which may be obtained by braking of the front wheel on a bicycle and in lightweight motorcycles is limited by the "nose-over" of the vehicle and rider when the moment of the force of deceleration of the rider's body mass with respect to the ground contact point of the front wheel exceeds the stabilizing moment of the weight of the rider's body also with respect to the same point. For the usual bicycle design the allowable deceleration force is approximately one-half the earth's gravitational force before nose-over occurs, and this is substantially independent of the weight of the rider. Therefore, it is an objective of this invention to provide a brake capable of producing automatically no more than the maximum allowable deceleration force, substantially independent of the condition of the ground surface or the coefficient of friction of the braking system.
It is a further object of this invention to provide a bicycle brake which is torque controlled so that the maximum torque applied to the wheel is fixed and substantially independent of the maximum travel applied to the hand brake above the value which results in the fixed torque value.
It is a feature of this invention that a torque less than the maximum torque may be obtained by controlling the force applied to the handbrake.
It is a further object of this invention to provide such a brake which is lightweight and inexpensive and hence suitable for use on a bicycle.